Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from honey just as wine is made from grapes. Its an easy and fun alternative to beer for the home brewer looking for an alternative and wanting to experiment. Fermentation takes place with the yeast eating the sugar in the honey and leaving behind carbonation and alcohol. Its a simple process and one enjoyed in many parts of the world for centuries.

With the rise in popularity of grape wine in the southern half of Europe, and beer in the northern half; mead making fell out of favor being more expensive to make. With home brewing there is an oppourtunity to explore and enjoy this ancient practice.

When people think of a homebrew, it can often be limited to beer or wine. The same equipment used for making beer can be used for any types of alcohol that is brewed with yeast. There are a number of reasons to make and enjoy mead.

1: Availability of honey. Honey is harvested anywhere there are flowers. Many farmers will hire apiarists (beekeepers) to bring their hives to pollinate their fields to increase their crop yield. Honey is left over as a byproduct. This leaves the honey cheap and very fresh. Fresh barley for beer or fresh grapes for wine are not as widespread as flowers for the home brewer apart from specialty stores.

2: Variety of honey. Just as there are different types of grapes that dictate the taste of wine, so too are there different types of honey. Each plant's flowers gives a different taste to the final honey. Ranging from a spicy flavor in desert and mesquite honeys all the way to toasted marhsmellow flavor from the meadowfoam honey there can be a wide range.

3: Variety of additives. One advantage of mead over wine or beer for the homebrewer is how easily mead blends with other flavors. Spices such as clove, cinnamon, and cardamom work beautifully in methlegin or spiced mead. Any type of fruit can be blended as well such as apples in a cyser, grapes in a pymet or any other fruit in a melomel.

4: Cost of the honey. Per volume, finished mead is as cheap or cheaper to make as beer or wine and is a good way to save money while still enjoying your homebrewing hobby.

An easy first batch
Mead is an easy process and if you are familiar with beer or wine making it is much the same. Below is a basic recipe to start with that can be scaled up depending on the size of your containers.

3 lbs honey
1 gallon of water (distilled or bottled preferably but not required)
1 packet of yeast

Each ingredient will impart a different flavor on your mead. Since the yeast is doing the work this is a crucial part of the recipe. For dry yeast Lalvin D-47 or 71 B works well. If you have access to a liquid yeast I highly suggest using Wyeast Sweet Mead 3184XL. I would discourage using baking yeast. It will get the job done but the taste of the mead is not as clear and crisp as it could be with the correct brewing yeast.

If you are using a dry yeast you will want to 'wake' it up. Get a small bowl of room temperature water and pour the yeast in it. This will wake up the yeast from its dry dormant state and get it ready. It also makes it stir into your honey mixture easier to spread around. Dumping the yeast straight in will get a clumping effect wasting the yeast in the middle of the clump.

Should you boil your honey first?
There has been quite a bit of debate on the topic of boiling and this most often comes from which other types of alcohols are made. Beer homebrewers that have to boil their hops believe that boiling the honey is preferred while wine makers that do not boil see no need. I have made perfectly fine mead using both methods though I have found boiling will weaken and lower the bouquet of the mead.
My preferred method is to heat the water and honey enough for the honey to dissolve but not to exceed 140 F degrees. This helps the yeast get to the honey easier and speeds up fermentation.

Putting it together.
If you boil, heat, or not you will pour your mixture into your primary fermenter. Be sure that the water is room temperature and not still boiling. Remember that yeast are living things and don't like to be boiled any more then we would. Put your airlock on the fermenter and place it in a cool dark area. The yeast can take 2 weeks or up to 2 months in the primary fermenter. A good rule of thumb is that its done when there it takes more then one minute before an air bubble rises out of the airlock.

You will then rack or transfer the mead out of the primary fermenter and into the secondary one. The yeast will be left over and now you will age the mead. I've had good meads aged after one month and have gone as long as one year before bottling. The longer the better. I would not drink a mead sooner then 6 months from start to finish before its true tastes and characteristics have yet to set in.

Your finished mead should be clear and crisp in flavor. Most drinkers I've shared mead with are surprised at their first taste as they expect a sweet honey flavored drink. The flavors are similar but not the same anymore that drinking wine is the same as drinking grape juice. Mead can be very sweet or very dry and have many different flavors of fruits and spices or any combination. It can be served cold for a summer afternoon or heated for a warm winter treat. One of the beauties of mead is that it has near endless flavor combinations that should appeal to the curious taster and hobbiest looking to create their own flavor